23 de enero de 2014

After the Spaniards, the most numerous readers of my blog are from USA. For this reason, I would like to write this post in English. This is the third part of my short story A night in New York, which I started in a previous post. With my best wishes to my North-American readers.

A NIGHT IN NEW YORK (part 3 of 3)

¾ Why are you here? ¾asked abruptly the man in the blue
coat¾. I have the impression that you
could get out as soon as you wanted, to hold any important position¾, you said smiling.

¾ I held them for too long. They did not make me
happy and I regretted many times to have remained in this city, because I
thought that things could have been different in some other place. Later I have
understood that everything is the same everywhere. Look, I told you earlier
some reasons, the most frequent, why people come here to the Bowery. There is
one more, less frequent and of a more philosophical nature. You already said
that I am a little philosopher. And you guessed it right because you are sophisticated
too, this can be noticed at once. I will tell you that, in a certain sense, in
fact I am a philosopher. I prefer to stay here rather that in this crazy world
outside. Crazy, cruel, unjust and tragic. You know the legend that Peter
Stuyevsant buried heaps of gold in his farm and there are still people who
expect to find them somewhere here. I can tell you that, in a way, I have found
that gold since I live apart on the Bowery.

¾ I can understand you perfectly. But I tell
you, however, that there was a time when I truly believed that the world could
be of milk and honey. And, for whatever reasons, this happened while I was
living in this city.

¾ You were happy here because you were young and
you will agree that you would have been happy then in any place. If you had
continued living here you would surely have a less embellished view of the
city. Although I also grant you, because all my life I have tried to be fair
and reasonable, that in truth this is a good place to be hopeful. Perhaps the
best place in the world. And now, I will bid you farewell; it is rather late
even for me.

The bum started to pick up his
belongings getting ready to go to sleep. Suddenly, he spoke again to the
foreigner.

¾ What I have told you about the world was very
clearly stated by your admired and beloved Goethe. I will quote by heart, but I
will not be too wrong: “All things of this world are finally trifles and he
who, in order to please others, against his needs and likings, gets exhausted
chasing after honors, fortune or anything else is always a crazy man”. It comes
from Werther.

The engineer started to feel
something very close to fascination towards the bum. “How do you know that I am
an admirer of Goethe? Are you not a kind of a wizard too?”.

¾ Goethe is an admirable author and clearly you
are a sensitive person who have to admire him immensely. And besides this
night, when you set out to take a grave decision, you decided to dress up a
little like Werther, who wore for that occasion a blue tailcoat and a yellow
vest. You know that after the publication of the novel there was almost an
epidemic of youngsters’ suicides dressed up in the same fashion.

The man in the blue coat could not
help a smile. It was true that his yellow foulard
was more than a last coquettishness. Since he read Werther, being a youth, he
always thought that, if once life became a burden and he decided to escape, he
would like to do it in an elegant manner and wearing something similar to the
young and unfortunate Werther.

¾ You are right; my clothes are not entirely casual.
I always dreamt of a dignified and esthetically irreproachable death, with all
details well taken care of. That is why I had always thought of this city in
full night. And, of course, I admire Goethe very much.

¾ It is relatively easy to prepare one’s death,
from the esthetical point of view. What is really difficult is to live that
way. But this is the only thing worthy. A life far from vulgarity, vain people,
stupid honors, disloyal competitions, adulation, the thousands of tricks,
hypocrisy, servility and so many other things. This is what you should keep
trying. Especially now that, for many reasons, you can be freer than ever and
nothing can be too important for you. I tell you that, not as a moralist ¾I do not like them¾ but as an esthetician. And I think
that this is what you are going to do after all. Tonight you will end up in
your room at the Waldorf and tomorrow you will see things in another light.
There, many times though not always, they had good cuisine.

¾ Tell me, please, why do you think I will go to
the hotel? I can assure you that I did not think that when I left my room many
hours ago. I left a letter…

¾ I do not know exactly. Perhaps because you
keep too many memories. Memories make us sometime suffer, but they help us too,
because they are the best, the only proof of that we have not lived in vain.
And now I leave you. Good luck.

The
engineer saw how the bum walked slowly out and followed him with his eyes for a
while. Then, although he saw only his back, waved to him goodbye with his hand
and left the place too. He was wandering for quite some time, crossing empty
streets and squares in which there were only some cars and was getting closer
to the pedestrian access to Brooklyn Bridge. Finally he reached the pedestrian
platform and started walking very slowly, admiring once again the imposing
structure and the beauty of the design. John Roebling, who built it, was born
almost 200 years ago in a small village in Germany. He had, like many others,
powerful dreams and emigrated to the United States in 1831, aged 25 years. In
1852, going from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the ferry that crossed the East
River, he conceived the idea of building the bridge. When he finally got his
project approved, in 1869, he and his son Washington were one day inspecting
the boarding pier of the ferry, looking for the place to start the
construction. John did not see a boat arriving and the hull crushed his foot.
The wound became seriously infected and he died a month later. During all this
time, from his bed, he could see the works and tried to manage them with the
help of his wife who went tirelessly between her husband and the workers
carrying orders and news, with a mixture of abnegation, rage and stubbornness.
It was his son Washington, already first generation American and born in
Pennsylvania, who finished it. Walt Whitman had also dreamt of a bridge
embracing Manhattan and Brooklyn and had baptized this future unified land with
the name of Brooklyniana, in his poem
Crossing the Brooklyn ferry. He had
chanted the fleeting character of human lives against the tenacious and
perennial Nature: Other will see the islands large and
small; / [...] / a hundred years hence, or ever / so many hundred years hence,
/ others will see them, / will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the
flood-tide, / the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

Some other writers, like Hart Crane,
Lewis Mumford or Alan Trachtenberg wrote about the bridge. Painters took it to
canvases like Joseph Stella or John Marin. The bridge was a motive of pride, of
confidence in the future for a nation that had been on the verge of being
destroyed in a devastating and tragic civil war. They started to call it the
eighth world wonder.

You, Arturo, knew details of all
this ¾even some that not many people knew¾ because you had given many talks and attended
conferences on the subject of New York bridges. Some of them were the work of
European immigrants who looked for a country where they could fulfill their
ambitions and projects. There are many things worthy to fight for, you thought.
In your memory, a legion of fighters, visionaries, entrepreneurs, assembled
suddenly and you understood that all the grandeur that you were contemplating
and that moved you so intensely was due to them, had not sprung by some
spontaneous and gratuitous blessing of nature but it was a work of men or
heroes. You remembered once more John Roebling, struggling to reach his dream
while he was dying. ¡This was a good and beautiful way to die! It was already
almost dawn and you remembered the terrible verses from Lorca’s Poet in New York:La aurora de Nueva
York gime / por las inmensas escaleras / [...]
/ La aurora llega y nadie la recibe en su boca,
/ porque allí no hay mañana ni esperanza posible*.
You found them strange,
impossible to share and unjust.

At that moment, a police car
approached and they asked you, from inside, if you wanted or needed something.
You answered that you were only looking for a cab to return to your hotel. The
policemen offered to take you. “Are you sure that you are O.K.?”, they asked
you again, once in the car, with a certain worry. “I am perfectly”, you
answered. In your first years in America, some time the police had stopped you
for some light traffic violation and when you explained or gave some excuse
they had always dismissed the charge. Surely, you thought now, some form of
innocence traveled then in your eyes for which everything was forgiven to you.
Like now in those of the younger policeman who after arriving at the hotel got
out of the car, accompanied you to the reception desk, shook your hand and
finally, with his fist closed and the thumb stretched up, said «Riyal Madrid»
or something similar. It is something that human beings have while they are
young and then it is lost irretrievably. Except perhaps in exceptional cases.

You went to the bathroom, wetted
your face with a towel soaked in warm water, put a pajama on and got to bed.
You left some time to pass. At 8.20 you called the hospital and talked to Dr.
Sethna. “Yes, good morning. Tell me. I am glad, Mr. Villar, I think that you
have made the right decision. Come this afternoon, at 3 p. m. We have to do
some more tests before starting treatment. Do not eat anything after noon; I will
be here. Until later, then”. Dr. Sethna looked in his archive and got a card
with the name Mr. Arturo Villar. He crossed out the notice Patient declined treatment and wrote Patient will start treatment as soon as possible.

In the hotel room a man took refuge
in the sleep. At 2 p.m. he was awakened as he had ordered. He got ready fast,
went to the hospital and once there was taken immediately to Dr. Sethna. They
studied all the practical aspects of the treatment: the first cycle would be
done in New York to study and control his response but he could continue in
Madrid, without any problem. They drew blood from him to do some more tests and
he had something to arrange in the Admissions office. Once everything was over,
the engineer returned to the hotel and dined since he had not eaten in the
whole day. Later, still in daylight, he decided to take a cab for the Bowery,
to the same area where he had been the night before. He arrived at the exact
spot but he did not see the bum he was looking for and only found the tall man
with the black scarf. He spoke to him and asked him directly: “Have you seen
the man who was with me yesterday? Do you know where he might be? He told me
that he is always here…”.

The tall tramp seemed not to
understand him and the man asked anew: “Do you not remember me? Last night…”.

¾ Yes, I remember you perfectly. You gave me
money the past night. I have recognized you at once.

¾ Then, where can he be, the man who was with
me?

The bum looked at him again
surprised and bewildered and answered him: “you will excuse me, Sir. I have
already told you that I have recognized you immediately. But there was no one
with you last night. You arrived in a cab and then you sat here alone, in this
place for a good moment. I was observing you for quite long and finally I
decided to ask you for some money. You gave it to me and a little later you
left. But you were all the time alone, you were never with anyone; this I can
assure you. You remember wrongly or have become confused”.

The engineer did not insist more.
There was still a red copper color in the horizon, at the end of the streets
coursing towards the Hudson River. The Bowery looked desolate and dirty much
more perceptibly in daylight. He felt uncomfortable and returned to the hotel.
He was disturbed by the memory of the mysterious bum on the Bowery. It could
not be a hallucination; he had to exist in reality! Probably the vagabond with
the scarf had been peeping on him only part of the time and was wrong by saying
that he had been always alone. At any rate, it was very reasonable what the bum
had told him. He thought then that he should try simply to live, to finish
sweetly what might remain of life. Instead of installing himself
melancholically in the past it could be tempting to abandon oneself and to
dream. And to be hopeful. He remembered these words of the Kybalion, the treaty on hermetic philosophy of Egypt and Greece
dedicated to Hermes Trismegistos (Hermes, thrice Great): Everything is dual; everything has two poles; everything has a pair of
opposites; similar and antagonistic are the same; the opposites are identical
in nature, but of different degree; the extremes meet; all truths are half
truths; all paradoxes can be reconciled.

You yourself were surprised to
remember these words read so many years ago, in the past. You have never
believed neither in magic nor in esoteric sciences and have always been proud
of being a rational man. Imagine if at the end you are going to grasp to all
that, you smiled. No, obviously not. But it is also human to cling to
something, to think, when everything is over, that it is never too late for
anything, that there still can be a way through, a possibility, remote but
real, of still exhausting the splendid sap of life, of the happiness that
exists also in life. Youth and old age, life and death. Everything is the same,
everything gets fused and only remains, as a last residue, the pure and
incomprehensible sum of fatuities and hazards that we call existence.

*Dawn in New York cries / in the immense staircases / […] / The first
light of dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth, / because here there
are neither tomorrow nor possible hope.

22 de enero de 2014

After the Spaniards, the most
numerous readers of my blog are from USA. For this reason, I would like to write
this post in English. This is the second part of my short story A night in New York, which I started in
a previous post. With
my best wishes to my North-American readers.

A NIGHT IN NEW YORK (part 2 of 3)

There were in the place where he was
left some men lying on cardboards, protecting themselves against the house
walls and wrapped in blankets. Almost all of them were asleep. One of them,
however, with a relatively trimmed beard and very long hair was sitting on the
sidewalk with a big bottle of milk on the floor and, almost automatically, you
walked towards him. When he saw you he could not avoid a movement of amazement
and spontaneous precaution. Then he looked upon you more in detail and talked
to you: “What are you looking for here, brother?”.

¾ I am not looking for anything. And you, what
are you looking for?¾, you answered with a hint of
irritation.

The bum drank a long sip of his
bottle and his eyes tried again to fix the newcomer. He offered him to drink
but the man in blue coat refused politely.

¾ You are not from here, I am ¾said he finally, answering in a certain way his
question¾. Not always I have been here, but I
have been for some years already and I know many things. I know that, from time
to time, someone like you comes to this street, any night that surely is not
just one more for him. They are not many but there are some; you must know that
you are not the first one. They never come back ¾the bum stared at him¾. You are not poor, but something happens to
you that is worse and more ineludible than poverty and that can easily occur
without being poor, because wealth protects men only in a very deficient manner
and only in case of minor calamities. You come here because you confusedly look
for something, which is not easy to get, even here on the Bowery. This is
miserable place but most of the times it is quiet and even peaceful. I do not
know if you get me.

The man in blue coat felt obliged to
concentrate his attention in the figure of the vagabond, surprised by his words
and with the unpleasant feeling that he had understood too fast and too easily
what had brought him there. The hobo seemed to be more or less of his same age
and spoke English with a very slight accent, almost imperceptible.

¾ I understand you very well ¾answered humbly the engineer¾, and I see that you are a little philosopher
and perhaps a little foreteller. Have you always been that way or is it
something that develops while living on the Bowery? And you were not born in New
York, where are you from?

¾ In truth, now I could only say that I am
American, although I was born in a country probably not far from yours or
perhaps in yours ¾answered nonchalantly the bum¾. But I chose to remain here. I will tell you
that on the Bowery there are all kinds of types and one arrives here by many
different ways. Human beings are extraordinarily vulnerable; I mean, there are
many misfortunes, which they are continuously exposed to. One day misfortune
bites you deep in the heart, grasps you really firm and you get convinced that
it will never leave you off. And everything that looked solid and stable
collapses in a few minutes. At the beginning, not even oneself can explain what
is going on. Here there are thousands of stories. Only the recently stricken
sometime tell their story. Later you learn that it is not worthwhile. Not
because people do not try to listen and understand but because it is not easy
to explain them, probably because one self does not comprehend the thing wholly. I
am not going to tell you anything. Nor are you in condition to listen. Now you
must try to solve your problem.

¾ My problem is already solved and all I need is
some determination or help.

¾ The really important problems are never
totally solved. On the other hand, you will not find here that kind of help. In
the worst case, you only can get robbed and beaten just enough so they can
steal your money if you try to resist. Even that is not easy or warranted,
although some time it may happen. No, you will have to be the one to take any
decision. Think it over, brother.

That very morning, in a luxurious
and aseptic ambiance, an Indian physician, a famous specialist, in one of the
most prestigious hospitals of New York, had urged you in the same sense.
Interestingly, the message reached you now infinitely closer and warmer, more
naked, more urgent and unrejectable. “I will think it over”, you answered,
convinced by the tramp’s reasons, “but I assure you that it has been a long
time that I have been dwelling on that. I truly think that you are right and I
am not going to solve my problems among you. Can I do something for you?”.

¾ If things are as I believe, I guess that it
will cost you nothing to give me fifty dollars. If it is so, please give them
to me. Not every night someone like you comes to this place. Perhaps this
extravagancy comes more easily to a foreigner. But if you give me the money,
then you are entitled to tell me your story and I have the duty to listen to
it. There are rules. Something very similar do some special doctors who treat
people not completely sane; that is, all kind of people: you, everyone, and I.
Besides, perhaps your story is somehow different. The vast majority is composed
of variants of a few scripts that repeat themselves once and again. But as you
are, after all, a foreigner, it may be that you bring something new. What
intrigues me is why you have decided to solve your problem precisely here, in
New York.

¾ Because I was very happy here many years ago,
had many friends and never I felt as a foreigner. We were quite diverse people,
some born here and some not, but all fascinated by the city without any
restraint or measure. We knew it very well, not only its urban immensity and
its multiple reality but also its history, from the initial foundation. We were
proud of that and had promised, more or less seriously, not to accept in our
group anyone who did not know without hesitation, which one was the wooden leg
of Peter Stuyvesant or the name of the channel, which limits the northern part
of Manhattan Island. By the way, Peter Stuyvesant lost his own leg, the one of
flesh and bone, due to a canon ball wound while fighting against the Spaniards
in Saint Martin Island.

¾ The wooden leg was the right one and is was so
covered and embellished by silver pieces that many spoke of his silver leg. He
himself said that it was his good leg and worthier than all his other
extremities put together. You know that he died not far from here; on the piece
of land he had bought close to a path used probably by the native Indians,
where he lived happily his last years with his wife and two children. This area
took the name of the Dutch word for farm (bouwerie).
He is buried in the nearby St. Mark church. And Manhattan is limited on the
North side by the Suiten Duyvil Creek. I tell you all that to pass tour test
and by doing so you can accept me tonight as a confident.

¾ And he was in good terms with the English
colonel, Richard Nicolls, to whom he had surrendered the city, in 1664. In the
message that the latter sent to Massachussets informing about the victory he
already named the city as New York, to honor the Duke of York, to whom his
brother Charles II of England had left all the rights upon the English colonies
in America. It was an interesting period of time, different and relatively
distant for what it is this land’s history. There also was an ephemeral Swedish
establishment in Delaware valley and, decades before, Henry Hudson explored the
river, which subsequently bore his name, searching, although it may now seem
incredible to us, the longed for northwestern pass from the Atlantic Ocean to
China.

¾ But apart from this normal longing for your
youth, what happens to you now?

¾ What happens is something very simple that, at
the end, happens to everyone except to a few who have the fortune of not being
aware because everything occurs in a flash, without warnings: I have a serious
disease of which I will probably die. You know now the essentials and it does
not matter much whether it is the lung or the pancreas that kills you. Finally,
it is the same thing.

¾ ¡Ah, in no way, there are differences! The
pancreas is a great bastard; I tell you that have already had two bouts of
pancreatitis. It really is a very moody organ. And lacking the due respect for
innocent people because it seems that these pancreatitis occur to those who
abuse alcohol and I have only drunk milk all my life. And besides, for the
layman it is not even clear what it is good for. On the other hand, lungs have
their mission. How could we smoke if we did not have lungs? ¾finished the tramp with a great laughter¾. Well, in fact I never smoked too much and now
it is twenty years that I quitted.

¾ My pancreas has been respectful to me so far.
My problems do not come from there.

¾ Yeah… I am sorry pal. Most of the times the
problems that anguish us have to do with disease and death; a few other, every
time less, with love, and very few with wealth. I have been able to realize,
beyond any reasonable doubt, that the loss of power is more unbearable than
that of wealth. Coming back to your case, what I always ask myself in these
cases is: what is the hurry? Is it so terrible to wait whatever time is needed?
Have you severe pain or discomfort?

¾ No, not for the time being. And it is not
because of the waiting either. In my case, I sincerely think that is something
of an esthetic nature, as a kind of biographical reconsideration. I would like
to die with the image of this city in my eyes. It would be an elegant way to
pay an old debt that I have with New York, because it was propitious to me and
I left it.

¾ The things that we believe to have left behind
are those that accompany us more continuously. In respect to the city, it is
going to be here for centuries and nothing or nobody will be able to destroy
it, do you hear me? Because it has been built by men from all over the world
who believed themselves to be something more than men. This is what tells you
this American bum ¾continued now with irrepressible
pride¾. And you will always have time to
repeat this nocturnal tour, coming to the Bowery or wherever your fantasy or
whims may carry you.

The man in blue coat remained
silent, with his look lost in some place or time well far away. Finally, he
continued:

¾ You are probably right in everything. I think
I would better go now, because I still have to see what I am going to do. I
will give you the money ¾said the engineer, taking a
disordered bunch of bills mixed with some papers out of an inner pocket of his
coat¾.

¾ Wait, I will make some light ¾said the hobo, lighting a lantern. The man put
some order in his papers, found two 50-dollar bills and gave him one¾. Do you want something more? ¾ he asked him with the other 50-dollar bill in
his hand.

¾No, it is enough. Thanks.

The engineer turned then his head to
the left, disturbed by a light noise of steps, and found close to them another
bum of high stature and with his face almost hidden by an enormous scarf
wrapped many times around his neck. He had likely observed the scene and had
come closer to ask for money. “Please, give something to me too”, said he with
a voice not exempt of sweetness. The man in the blue coat looked at the first
tramp, who seemed to make a sign of acquiescence, and gave the other bill to
the newcomer, who then left immediately as if he were afraid of a sudden change
of heart. There remained again the two men alone.

¾ He is a good man. I know him only two
passions: alcohol and, when he is not drunk, cleanliness. Being sober, he is
all the time cleaning up his room in the flophouse.

The tramp looked again at the
engineer and recommended: “Do not be in a hurry, wait. Some 10-15 %
possibilities of cure is something worthy to wait for and justifies an attempt
to fight”.

The man did not remember having
mentioned at any time these details and asked himself how the bum could know
the exact percentages that the doctor had mentioned this very morning. “How do
you know these figures, these percentages?”, he inquired in wonder.

¾ Do not think that I am a clairvoyant because
of that. I go to doctors too and in this city they practice a modern and
scientific medicine and people die very well investigated. Now all doctors,
even those who take care of us, the poor, are always talking of percentages. If
someone is thinking of what you are thinking tonight it is because they did not
give him too a great hope. But no reasonable “doc” ¾they are very careful at that¾ would advance a too tiny percentage, less than
10 %. Given that, besides, there is always an associated degree of uncertainty,
an error presumption, 10-15 % seemed to me a quite likely option. But I tell
you that I am not a foreteller. Nevertheless, I will make a very specific
prediction. I think that today, at the end, you will decide to wait and this
night you will end up sleeping in your room at the Waldorf.

This time the man in the blue coat
could not overcome his astonishment. “Who are you? How do you know that I am
lodging at the Waldorf?”.

The bum broke into a loud laughter.
“How do I know? Well, only because I have seen your client card among the bills
that you showed before. You have some disorder there, although I understand
that tonight is not just any night for you”.

21 de enero de 2014

I lived some years in New York,
after finishing my studies in Spain. A friend of mine, who was born and lives
in that city, studied Medicine in Madrid a little later. Whenever we meet, I
remember my years in New York as probably the happiest of my life and so does
my friend his years in Madrid. Another friend of mine, who lives now in Canada
but studied in Paris, cannot refrain from making periodic ‘pilgrimages’ to the ville lumière. In fact, we all pursue
and yearn for the same: the time bygone, our youth, when the whole life lay
still ahead and seemed eternal.

After the Spaniards, the most
numerous readers of my blog are from USA. For this reason, I would like to write
this post in English. I will resume (again from the beginning) my short story A night in New York, which I started in
a previous post, and will complete in two more posts in the next days. With
my best wishes to my North-American readers.

These were already years of apathy
and boredom. He had come to New York as an obliged step in his rational
approach to the problem, because he wanted to have all the data and with all
possible accuracy. He did not come to this city as often as before but he had
always thought that, faced with a life threatening and serious disease, he
would like to rely on some other medical opinion, precisely here, taking
advantage of the relative ease to come and the friends and connections that he
still had. Then, once in the city, he had decided not to contact anyone until
knowing the definitive results of the tests and medical examinations. But this
was not planned, this was a last minute decision.

And there also was that other
desire, large and turbidly caressed: that of coming here to die, disturbing no
one, far from his reduced family and the old friends, in the city where he was
so happy and where, in a certain sense, he had achieved everything. The city
that he had nevertheless abandoned later. He had always experienced his return
to Spain as a sort of betrayal to this New York in which his best dreams had
become true. Why had he not remained here, why had he not spent his life here?
Is that we know why we do the things we do?

Many a time he had imagined himself
awaiting serenely his death at night, in some quiet place, isolated in the
immense city, gazing once more at the fascinating spectacle of the nocturnal
town that he had seen so many times coming to Manhattan, or returning, crossing
some of the bridges that he normally transited, Queensboro or Brooklyn. New
York is a city of light, of activity, of night and dreams. He still remembered
his first trips on board the Staten Island ferry, in working days ¾ “there are more lights then”, he had been told¾, with the skyscrapers ablaze, alone or with
some other friends, other foreigners like him, taking part in the tours
organized by the club in which he inscribed himself just upon his arrival,
located in the very center of Manhattan, the Midtown International Center.

In these tours the guide, a
volunteer, a Jew of German background but born already here, would always pose
questions, happy to be able to show for the first time so intense beauty to
such heterogeneous groups: “What do you think, what does it remind you, what
does it suggest to you?” ¡And so many different answers! All loaded with
emotion, pointing all out the glorious show of the city flooded with light,
exploding in light, like some inextinguishable fireworks, sprouting unstoppable
from the waters, planted there by the effort of true titans, full of energy and
life. It was a magic vision that evoked hidden and powerful giants, men capable
of looking face to face to gods, men who were as worthy as gods, who perhaps
were real gods and had forever stolen the sacred fire from the gods.

That wonder finished slowly and not
completely every night, but one had the certainty of its daily and eternal
renewal. And the same thing when crossing the innumerable bridges or climbing
the Empire State or going to the delightful bar at the top floor of 666 Fifth
Avenue. It would truly be a privilege to have that image in front of the eyes
while bidding farewell to the world, to have it in the retina when everything
were over.

In the hospital they had given him
definitive results that very morning and they were practically the same as
those of Madrid. There was little hope and the treatment would be prolonged and
hard. He refused to be treated and the doctor tried to convince him but did not
insist much once he saw the patient’s determination. “If you change your mind,
Mr. Villar, please, call this number. If you are going to start, it is
convenient to do it at once. Think it over, you still have 10-15 % chances of
recovery”, he said while writing on a card with the name Mr. Arturo Villar: Duly informed, the patient declined
treatment.

He left the hospital and started
walking on Fifth Avenue. He saw himself forty years back, driving a car in the
same street. He was then 25 years old, had arrived to New York a few months
earlier to work as a civil engineer and had adapted himself quickly. He had
been born in a small village in the South of Spain and did not have a car
there, although he had obtained a driving license. The car was almost new and
the woman who had sold it to him, when she realized how little experience he
had at driving, insisted, calling him by his first name, as almost everyone did
at that time: “Arturo, be very careful, please; promise me that you’ll be very
careful”. As if she were an old friend, sincerely worried about him. She was
young too; all were young then.

He returned to the hotel ¾he had fancied to lodge at the Waldorf Astoria,
in Park Avenue¾, had just a snack in one of the
bars and went to his room for a rest. Around 6 p.m. he dressed up with a care
unusual in the latter times, left a letter addressed to the Hotel Director, put
on a light blue cashmere overcoat with a mild yellow foulard and took a cab to Katz’s, on Houston St. It had been a long
time that he had not gone there. He saw once again at the entrance pictures of
Presidents of the United States who had eaten some time at the popular and
famous delicatessen. He had a
pastrami sandwich on rye bread and amused himself looking at the array of
clients that crowded the tables of the self-service: people of all races and
conditions, some in family groups, not excessively noisy.

When he left the restaurant it was
almost dark. He took another cab to Battery Park, to the terminal of the Staten
Island ferry and embarked on the first one available. Most of the travelers
were people returning home after a tiring workday in Manhattan. He saw again
the illuminated city skyline as he had seen it so many times when he was living
here, without the World Trade Center towers that were not built then and had
been destroyed now. The mystery and charm of that infinite Babel flooded again
his heart: “Nueva York, ¿qué ángel llevas oculto en la mejilla?”*.
Even García Lorca, who arrived at the city in 1929, tormented by a terrible
personal crisis, who was utterly unhappy in this country and wrote in those
months some of the saddest and most lonesome verses in the history of poetry,
came at some moment to perceive this something angelic and glorious that has
here the landscape. This feeling of unlimited confidence in life, of exciting
harvest of hopes. “Por el East River y el Bronx / los muchachos cantaban
enseñando sus cinturas”*, chanted Federico in his Ode to Walt Whitman.

Returning to Manhattan, while he
approached the multicolor mountain, to the left stood the Statue of Liberty,
this gigantic and laic goddess who dazzled so many and to whom the man with the
blue coat thought he had honored and offered sacrifices more than to any other.
Some time ago, when an enormous blackout had extinguished the lights of the New
York city, the statue had remained illuminated as a symbol of what cannot be
ever destroyed: the longing for freedom. Life, you told yourself, as you looked
the statue, can be happy or disgraceful, fulfilled or miserable, but if it is
not free it is not properly a life. And you remembered how moved you were when
you visited her, just arrived in the city and the poem inscribed on the bronze
plaque of the pedestal: “Give me your tired, your poor, /
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / the wretched refuse of your
teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp
beside the golden door”

You learned later that these emotive
verses had been written by a woman, Emma Lazarus, a Sephardic Jew belonging to
one of the oldest Jewish families in town. The statue, “Freedom lighting up the
world”, was erected in 1886 but did not have by her Emma’s words till 1901,
when Emma had already died, aged only 38. At the inauguration in 1886,
President Grover Cleveland had asked for “her light, the light of freedom, may
pierce the darkness of human ignorance and oppression”.

Unfortunately, there is not any
paradise on this earth of ours. The poet Leon Felipe wrote: “Sabemos que no hay
tierra / ni estrellas prometidas”**. The United States is not either. But
there is something, however, derived directly from the Founding Fathers, that
is pregnant of longing for freedom and justice. In spite of everything, it is
beautiful to erect statues to ideas and finally there are not so many. The fact
that reality always falls short of the professed ideals does not justify
scorning them. America is a good country for those who come to her and bring a
dream. Not everyone fulfills it, obviously, but you still think, now that you
are about to leave everything, that here it is probably easier that elsewhere
in the world. Although now, that you make this trip for the last time, you also
understand that almost all human ambitions are mad desires. You are having the
temptation of finishing your trip here, not because any circumstantial whim or
sudden weakness but because you know that this city has been forged with
illusions and keeps the value to which you have dedicated more vigorously your
life: freedom. But for the moment you want to reach again Manhattan’s tip and
ramble a last time through the old paths, when your heart took you from one
place to another, fluttering and zigzagging as a young bird learning to fly.

Once landed, the man in blue coat
took a cab: “I want to make a tour of about two hours, have you the time?”, he
asked the driver. “Yes”, answered he, after having studied briefly the man to
gauge whether he could pay for the service. “We will then go to Union Square
and from there, by Broadway, to 72nd street. Then we will drive by
the West Side Highway, southbound. I want to cross the Brooklyn bridge and
reach later Verrazano Bridge. We will stop somewhere”.

It was already late and there were
few people in the streets. Only arriving at 42nd street, in Times
Square, there were crowds and nocturnal life. When they arrived at 72nd
street, the man asked the driver to wait and, before he said anything, gave him
a 100-dollar bill. “Wait for me a moment, please”. He walked a little, looking
for the number of a house. When he found it he looked at the building and was
amazed to realize that he was unable to recognize anything, neither the door,
nor the windows nor any other detail of the house. He had gone there so many
times and now he could not remember a single feature of the building. He became
sad. Why memory is also destroyed, of what fragile and poor material are made
our memories? But it persists, and you can trace it, the happiness associated
with remembrances, you answered yourself. Something remains forever. And you
saw yourself in those eternal summer evenings, savoring deeply life with Susan
and then returning to Brooklyn by the route that you were to partially take
now, reaching the tip of Manhattan island, leaving always to your left that
enchanted and secret forest, of changing lights, into which the city turned
itself at night.

With the cab they followed now the
same itinerary and they headed for Brooklyn, crossing Brooklyn Bridge. In
nothing had diminished the beauty of the scenery, although he understood that
now other human beings would be called to enjoy the plenitude of the days, as
he and Susan had done so many years ago, and could not avoid even the feeling
of being coercing almost fraudulently reality, trying to rip from it something
that it did not belong to him in strict justice. He remembered, as he did so
often, the companion of so many years so atrociously absent. Immersed in so
much nostalgia, he, nevertheless, did not fail to perceive that life was still
there, intact, powerful, inextinguishable and vibrant, albeit it was now for
others. And that memories brought to him, in spite of everything, the gift of a
balmy and calm happiness. After some time they crossed Brooklyn and arrived at
Verrazano bridge. The bridge had been inaugurated exactly the year when the
Spanish engineer arrived in America, in 1964. It was built by another engineer,
born in Switzerland, Othmar H. Ammann, who emigrated to the United States at
the age of 25 years, because he had the implacable dream of building bridges
and thought that this country was the most appropriated to accomplish that
dream. At that time it was the longest suspended bridge in the world. It took
its name from the first European who explored what is today New York harbor,
Giovanni da Verrazano, in 1524. The suspension towers are not exactly parallel
because they must adapt to earth’s sphericity, so they are four centimeters
further apart in their upper poles that in their bases. The contractions and
expansions of its metallic structures cause the bridge to be four meters lower
in summer than in winter. Ammann had also worked on Quennsboro Bridge as a
helper of Gustav Lindenthal, an Austrian who emigrated to the United States aged
24 years, surely haunted by unpostponable designs.

It was almost 3 a.m. and he asked
the driver to turn around to come back to Manhattan and leave him on Bowery
Street. The driver asked him sharp but politely: “Are you sure, Sir, that you
want to be left there?”, surprised by the proposed destination and the man
answered without hesitation: “Yes, it is there where I want to go. Do not
worry”. When they arrived, the man paid him and gave him a good tip. The driver
could not help offering a last recommendation: “Take good care, Sir, you are not
in the best part of New York”. “I know, thank you”, he answered. This is
precisely what I am looking for, he thought.